A Post-Modern Revisioning of Radha Krishna Devotion

Ben Reist, my reformed the­ol­ogy pro­fes­sor, said “If a lit­tle Bud­dha rubs off on Jesus, and a lit­tle Jesus rubs off on Bud­dha, so much the bet­ter for both of them.” As an eclec­tic uni­ver­sal­ist, I firmly believe in the cross pol­li­na­tion of reli­gions as a means of com­ing to a higher under­stand­ing of truth. The num­ber of books avail­able in Eng­lish and the amount of infor­ma­tion on the inter­net about all sorts of reli­gion and spir­i­tu­al­ity presents an unpar­al­leled oppor­tu­nity to cre­ate a much broader under­stand­ing of God-dess and the means to God-dess. We must real­ize that all lan­guage and human under­stand­ing is inad­e­quate. We can never really fully com­pre­hend God-dess, but rather attain glimpses through grace. Each religious/spiritual path con­tains its own par­tic­u­lar view of God-dess from the per­spec­tive of their cul­tur­ally derived realizations.

“Bhak­tivin­oda envi­sioned the mod­ern reli­gious thinker as a sara­grahi, one able to tran­scend the lim­i­ta­tions of his own reli­gious cul­ture and appre­ci­ate the spir­i­tual essence of other reli­gious traditions.”1 My long peri­ods of immer­sion in Chai­tanya Vaish­nav­ism and Chris­tian­ity as an ordained reli­gious leader along with study and prac­tice of other tra­di­tions cer­tainly qual­i­fies me in this regard.

When we go beyond sec­tar­ian under­stand­ings and take the best of each tra­di­tion, we can­not but ben­e­fit. The world is so divided, and yet, we are so close. So much of the vio­lence we see has at least reli­gious over­tones, and reli­gion seems to divide more than unite. We can­not afford to live like this any longer. We have to learn to see the uni­fy­ing essen­tials of all faiths, real­iz­ing God-dess is One and we are one fam­ily of God-dess.
I use the term God-dess to rec­og­nize that the Ground of All Being is both mas­cu­line and fem­i­nine, the Divine Cou­ple, Radha Krishna whom I choose to wor­ship, and yet, not to limit it to Radha Krishna while not lim­it­ing it to the patri­ar­chal image God invokes either. It is also less famil­iar than the term God and frees us to cre­ate new images of God-dess.
My grand-guru Srila Bhak­tivin­ode Thakur, was influ­enced by Chris­t­ian and Uni­tar­ian think­ing, and was a nine­teenth cen­tury advo­cate of using the com­par­a­tive and ratio­nal tech­niques of British ori­en­tal­ism. He saw the pro­gres­sive rev­e­la­tion of truth. He states, “Essen­tial truth is of two types: orig­i­nal form (svaru­pam) and in rela­tion to the peo­ple who will receive it (sambandikam).”2

This relates to the study of exe­ge­sis and hermeneu­tics, the process of using schol­arly tech­niques to under­stand what a scrip­tural pas­sage meant in its ear­li­est set­ting for the orig­i­nal intended audi­ence, and then using an inter­pre­tive process to derive its mean­ing for the audi­ence being addressed today.

Bhak­tivin­ode real­ized that there are essen­tial truths in the scrip­tures, but that they need to be rein­ter­preted for every new gen­er­a­tion, espe­cially when the per­sons receiv­ing that truth are of a dif­fer­ent cul­tural and reli­gious back­ground. So, main­tain­ing the essen­tial truth of a pas­sage, one applies it dif­fer­ently today than one would have say 500 years ago or even yes­ter­day or from one audi­ence to the next. Each audi­ence calls for a par­tic­u­lar, unique per­for­mance of the truth accord­ing to its under­stand­ings and needs. Every­one is at a dif­fer­ent stage of spir­i­tual devel­op­ment. There­fore, they need a dif­fer­ent word of truth. Mar­tin Luther said, “That may be the word of God for you, but it’s not for me.”

India, espe­cially Vrind­a­ban, is extremely con­ducive to devel­op­ing love of Radha Krishna. There is a tremen­dous amount of cul­tural sup­port for spir­i­tual life in gen­eral, which is quite dif­fer­ent from what we find in the West. Radha Krishna devo­tion is a prod­uct of Indian spir­i­tual cul­ture devel­oped over mil­len­nia. To most West­ern­ers, it seems quite for­eign. Yet some of us are able to bridge the spir­i­tual, cul­tural divide and appre­ci­ate its essen­tial spir­i­tual truths. Some West­ern­ers have even adopted Indian lifestyles and attempt to fol­low the prac­tices as much like Indi­ans as pos­si­ble. Such per­sons also tend to be lit­er­al­is­tic, fun­da­men­tal­ists in their per­spec­tive. Oth­ers, like myself, rel­ish the spir­i­tual essence, live a more West­ern lifestyle and try to adopt the teach­ings to West­ern cul­ture in order to reach a broader audi­ence and not cre­ate unnec­es­sary social and cul­tural disruption.

Bhak­tivin­ode also said, “Progress cer­tainly is the law of nature and there must be cor­rec­tions and devel­op­ments with the progress of time.”3 Accord­ing to process the­ol­ogy, every­thing is in process, includ­ing God-dess who is beyond our under­stand­ing and yet our col­lec­tive and indi­vid­ual under­stand­ing of God-dess devel­ops over time. If faith does not grow and develop, it stag­nates and dies. Unfor­tu­nately, many devo­tees con­sider their guru to be a super-human being who has taught an unadul­ter­ated, per­fect vision of God and the spir­i­tual world that must be trans­mit­ted with­out change regard­less of changes in cir­cum­stance and under­stand­ing. Thus they ask us to believe the unbe­liev­able. They also tend to place the guru on such a high pedestal that no one can ever equal him (these gurus tend to be male) or be qual­i­fied to cri­tique his teachings.

Yet Bhak­tivin­ode says, “Lib­erty then is the prin­ci­ple, which we must con­sider as the most valu­able gift of God. We must not allow our­selves to be led by those who lived and thought before us. We must think for our­selves and try to get fur­ther truths which are still undis­cov­ered. In the Bha­ga­vat we have been advised to take the spirit of the shas­tras and not the words. The Bha­ga­vat is, there­fore, a reli­gion of lib­erty, unmixed truth, and absolute love.”4 I take this seri­ously, think for myself and read widely. I am not afraid to dis­agree with Swamiji, Bhak­tivin­ode or even Chai­tanya when I see a bet­ter path for myself.
In Hindu Encounter with Moder­nity, a schol­arly biog­ra­phy of Srila Bhak­tivin­ode, Shukavak N. Dasa con­cludes that “if Chai­tanya Vaish­nav­ism is going to have a last­ing posi­tion and pos­i­tive impact on the West, then it must intel­lec­tu­ally move beyond the lit­er­al­ism by which it entered the West and begin to develop new forms of intel­lec­tual expres­sions and per­spec­tives that are a part of the West­ern intel­lec­tual and aca­d­e­mic tra­di­tions. Bhaktivinoda’s work pro­vides the basis for such a development.”

This is a mis­sion I have been work­ing on for over thirty years. I shed most of the Indian cul­tural exter­nals of Vaish­nav­ism and main­tained the spir­i­tual essence. “Bhaktivinoda’s sep­a­ra­tion of the phe­nom­e­nal and the tran­scen­dent, along with his implicit dis­tinc­tion between reli­gious faith and belief”5 frees me to exper­i­ment with the task of cre­at­ing a lifestyle where by West­ern­ers can uti­lize the spir­i­tual prac­tices of Chai­tanya Vaish­nav­ism with­out hav­ing to become alien­ated from West­ern cul­ture or pur­sue the life of a renunciate.

“Bhak­tivin­oda rec­og­nized the need for spir­i­tual and cul­tural adaptation…Bhaktivinoda’s life…provides an excel­lent exam­ple of respon­si­ble worldly engage­ment and Vais­nava practice.…If Chai­tanya Vaish­nav­ism is to become indige­nous to the mod­ern and even West­ern world, then it must…adapt to con­di­tions of moder­nity and to the West..”6 It is up to West­ern devo­tees of Radha Krishna to make this hap­pen. We should not be imi­tat­ing Indian dress, social orders, cus­toms and anti­quated belief systems.

Bhak­tivin­oda “approached the tran­scen­dent through reli­gious faith rooted in sahaja-samadi, innate reli­gious intuition.”7 This is also my mode of oper­a­tion. It allows free­dom and cre­ativ­ity in the reli­gious realm for new rev­e­la­tions of spir­i­tual truth that are not bound by the past.

“Chai­tanya Vaish­nav­ism as it now exists in the West is largely dis­con­nected from the tra­di­tion of raganuga-bhakti-sadhana, and for this rea­son is some­what alien­ated from the eso­teric depths and spir­i­tual inspi­ra­tion of its par­ent move­ment.” I was ini­ti­ated into thi
s path of spon­ta­neous devo­tional ser­vice to Radha Krishna by Bhaktivinode’s son and dis­ci­ple, Lalita Prasad Thakur. This frees me from being overly depen­dent on rules and reg­u­la­tions that seem to pre­oc­cupy so many devo­tees while enabling me to expe­ri­ence the eso­teric spir­i­tual aspects of devo­tion. Thus, I live a mod­ern, West­ern life con­ducive to my spir­i­tual growth. This is what I offer oth­ers as well.

I shall now attempt to delin­eate some of the dif­fer­ences between my under­stand­ing and that of A.C. Bhak­tivedanta Swami and his fol­low­ers using five impor­tant ques­tions from The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dog­matic Reli­gion to a More Authen­tic Con­tem­po­rary Faith by Mar­cus Borg as an outline.

1. “Is the reli­gious life focused on this life or the next (and if both, then in what proportion)?”

The way Radha Krishna devo­tion was intro­duced to the West was with an empha­sis on the next life. My ini­ti­at­ing guru, A.C. Bhak­tivedanta Swami (Swamiji), said to me, “You have had so many life­times of sense grat­i­fi­ca­tion. Why not make an exper­i­ment and sac­ri­fice this one life for Krishna and see what is the result?” The under­stand­ing he taught us was that this life was of no impor­tance except for the real­iza­tion of Krishna. Love, wealth, fam­ily, pres­tige, hap­pi­ness, com­fort, etc. are of no impor­tance. All that was impor­tant was to fol­low the guru’s instruc­tions, all the rules and reg­u­la­tions of devo­tional life he taught us and develop love of Krishna.

I was a twenty year old hip­pie liv­ing in Haight Ash­bury when I became his dis­ci­ple. At the time, I could not imag­ine liv­ing past thirty. I was a seri­ous spir­i­tual seeker will­ing to do what­ever it took to become enlight­ened. I was liv­ing with a young woman, she became his dis­ci­ple too and he mar­ried us. How­ever, Swamiji held up the ideal of being a celi­bate renun­ci­ate as the best lifestyle and dis­cour­aged sex within mar­riage even except for pro­cre­ation. This led to the breakup of our mar­riage and my entry into the renounced order of life.

I spent three years in India and con­sid­ered liv­ing there per­ma­nently. How­ever, even as a renun­ci­ate, I was pressed to do fund-raising and tem­ple con­struc­tion. My sid­dha pranali guru, Lalita Prasad Thakur told me to go back to the West and preach. I was invited to go to the Hon­olulu tem­ple where I would just have to do my devo­tional prac­tices and preach. I went and got a big new tem­ple donated by the Ford Foun­da­tion through Alfred Ford. Swamiji then ordered me to Fiji to start a tem­ple. I had been out of man­age­ment for some­time and was deep into my spir­i­tual prac­tices. Being thrown back into man­age­ment and pol­i­tics was not con­ducive to my spir­i­tual prac­tices. When I was around 28 I started think­ing, “What if I do live a long time. Am I going to go on like this?” I had to make a deci­sion. I went into the hill coun­try for a week to dis­cern a course of action. This led me to return to Hon­olulu and resign from ISKCON, along with other lead­ers, my rea­son being that ISKCON was cor­rupt and no longer con­ducive to either my spir­i­tual growth or as a preach­ing plat­form. I could no longer rec­om­mend that per­sons fol­low Swamiji or live in his temples.

I did not lose faith in Radha Krishna how­ever, and since 1974, I have lived a West­ern lifestyle, giv­ing up most of the cul­tural exter­nals of the devo­tional prac­tices as well as the rules and reg­u­la­tions I had been so bound by. I con­tinue to prac­tice the spon­ta­neous style of devo­tion Lalita Prasad taught me.

At some point I thought, “There must be more of a pur­pose to this life life than just try­ing to escape from this mate­r­ial plane to a spir­i­tual plane. There has to be a rea­son why I’m here no mat­ter how hard I try to tran­scend. There is work to be done on this plane and lessons to be learned along the way.

The Vedic tra­di­tion has a strong empha­sis on celibacy and renun­ci­a­tion. There is a basic neg­a­tive world view. How­ever, there are strands that are more life affirm­ing. Bhak­tivin­ode was a col­lege edu­cated, Assis­tant Dis­trict Mag­is­trate and British Indian civil ser­vant most of his life with a wife and four­teen chil­dren. Sri Chai­tanya said, “Enjoy the mate­r­ial world in a befit­ting way but do not become attached to it. Within your heart, you should keep your­self very faith­ful, but exter­nally you may behave like an ordi­nary per­son. Thus, Krishna will soon be very pleased and deliver you from the clutches of illusion.”8   It is the inter­nal faith­ful­ness, not exter­nal prac­tices that is most impor­tant. This pas­sage serves as a model for me.

I have faith in God-dess, Radha Krishna, not in a par­tic­u­lar set of dog­mas and doc­trines, rules and reg­u­la­tions I learned from some­one else. The par­tic­u­lars of belief may change over time, and some­times I choose not to believe in any­thing so that I may sim­ply see what is. As Bhak­tivin­ode pointed out, belief and faith are dif­fer­ent. It is steady faith that is important.

After Chai­tanya took vows of renun­ci­a­tion and moved to Puri, he sent Nityananda Prabhu who accom­pa­nied him to Puri back to Ben­gal with instruc­tions to marry so that per­sons would not think it nec­es­sary to be a renun­ci­ate in order to serve Radha Krishna. Nityananda mar­ried two sis­ters, one of whom, Sri Jah­nava Thaku­rani is the founder of my line of dis­ci­plic succession.

Renounced priests are con­sid­ered to be the pin­na­cle of the Vedic social order. How­ever, that social order does not exist in the West. Swamiji intro­duced it here and his fol­low­ers try to fol­low it, but there was no way I could con­tinue liv­ing as a renun­ci­ate here in the U.S. with­out the insti­tu­tional sup­port of ISKCON. There­fore I am mar­ried, and while liv­ing a fairly renounced life com­pared to most Amer­i­cans, I am very much in the world and enjoy the sim­ple plea­sures of life to their fullest with no guilt.

Chris­tian­ity is much more incar­na­tional in its approach to spir­i­tu­al­ity see­ing acts of love and com­pas­sion in this world as an impor­tant part of the way. I ben­e­fited greatly by my involve­ment in the church for about twenty years. Adopt­ing the pro­fes­sional stan­dards of pro­gres­sive Chris­t­ian clergy has allowed me to find a bal­ance between the imma­nent and tran­scen­dent, this world and the next. If we can­not be lov­ing to per­sons here, how can we love Radha Krishna. If we do not love our­selves, how can we love oth­ers? How can we appre­ci­ate the next life if we do not appre­ci­ate this one?

Chaitanya’s phi­los­o­phy is “incon­ciev­ably one and dif­fer­ent.” Unfor­tu­nately Swamiji empha­sized the dif­fer­ence between the mate­r­ial and spir­i­tual worlds with a dual­is­tic view. I pre­fer to see the spir­i­tual world as inter­pen­e­trat­ing the mate­r­ial world and when we develop spir­i­tual vision, we can see that and act spir­i­tu­ally within this world. That is more life affirm­ing and less dual­is­tic. Is this God-dess given life really meant to just be rejected?

2. Is it about meet­ing God’s require­ments, whether they are many or few? Or about liv­ing by grace in a place beyond the dynamic of requirements.

Swamiji taught us that we had to meet many require­ments in order to finally be saved by grace because no mat­ter how much we tried we could not attain the spir­i­tual world by our own efforts. He often said, “By the mercy of the spir­i­tual mas­ter one receives the bene­dic­tion of Krishna. With­out the grace of the spir­i­tual mas­ter, one can­not make any advance­ment.” Which meant that we had to stay on his good side and do what he told us to do or we were doomed. His require­ments cov­ered every­thing from eat­ing, to pass­ing stool, how we wore our hair, bathing, sex life, etc.. With me, it was also things like raise money and build a sky­scraper in Vrind­a­ban, or go to Fiji and start a tem­ple. “It is my order. You must do it.”

After years of study­ing Swamiji’s books as well as what lit­tle writ­ings by Bhak­tivin­ode in Eng­lish were avail­able at the time, I began to have inklings that there was more to this than just fol­low­ing a bunch of rules and reg­u­la­tions. When I went to Vrind­a­ban, my sus­pi­cions were con­firmed. I
found out about the path of spon­ta­neous devo­tional ser­vice fol­low­ing in the mood of the res­i­dents of the spir­i­tual Vrind­a­ban. This is the nat­ural next stage of devo­tional prac­tice which fol­low­ing the rules and reg­u­la­tions is sup­posed to lead to.

How­ever, Swamiji dis­cour­aged us from even think­ing that we were qual­i­fied to fol­low our heart’s nat­ural spir­i­tual incli­na­tions. We needed to just fol­low his instruc­tions with­out ques­tion and not read other books than his or go to other teach­ers. This was not accept­able to me, so I con­tin­ued to pur­sue the teach­ings I was look­ing for. I secretly went to Lalita Prasad Thakur, the son and dis­ci­ple of Bhak­tivin­ode Thakur, and he explained every­thing to me. Bhak­tivin­ode prac­ticed spon­ta­neous devo­tion, and that is what he taught. His other son, Bhak­tisid­dhanta Saraswati, made many changes and his dis­ci­ple, Swamiji, changed things even more.

Since 1974, I have been fol­low­ing the path of spon­ta­neous devo­tion. and not fol­low­ing rules and reg­u­la­tions. I fol­lowed rules and reg­u­la­tions for eight years under Swamiji; they did their job, my heart was opened. What­ever spir­i­tual prac­tices I fol­low, I do so because I want to. I real­ize that I truly am inca­pable of effect­ing my own sal­va­tion and am totally depen­dent on the grace of Radha Krishna which I know is there for me unconditionally.

Krishna says, “All of Me, namely My actual eter­nal form and My tran­scen­den­tal exis­tence, color, qual­i­ties and activities–let all be awak­ened within you by fac­tual real­iza­tion, out of My cause­less mercy.”9 And, “Aban­don all kinds of reli­gion and sur­ren­der to me alone. I will free you from all sin­ful reac­tions. Do not fear.”10

Bhak­tivin­ode wrote, “The prac­tion­ers real­ize that Krishna alone is the object of remem­brance, and that He should never be for­got­ten. They under­stand that all rules–positive or negative–follow this prin­ci­ple of always remem­ber­ing and never for­get­ting the Lord.”11 Also, “When devo­tees attain the stage of desire­less prac­tice in devo­tion, they can give up depen­dence on the rules and regulations…When one becomes attached to the Supreme Per­son­al­ity of God­head, his nat­ural incli­na­tion to love is fully absorbed in thoughts of the Lord.”12

3. Does it lead to a pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with our own sal­va­tion and good­ness (or lack thereof)? Or to lib­er­a­tion from self-preoccupation?

Swamiji’s fol­low­ers seem extremely pre­oc­cu­pied with their own sal­va­tion, fol­low­ing a strict reg­i­men of prac­tices through­out the day. Since the stan­dards are set so high and are so strict and life deny­ing, most feel guilty for not being bet­ter devo­tees. There just is not the cul­tural sup­port in the West for this sort of lifestyle. Some man­age to live up to the stan­dards well enough to feel they attained a higher level of good­ness and purity, but then there is still the prob­lem of main­tain­ing that level through strict prac­tice so they do not back slide or fall down as they call it.

Fol­low­ing the spon­ta­neous path, I do not aspire for good­ness per se or worry about my sal­va­tion. I fig­ure what­ever I do is good and God-dess will make up any defi­ciency. I do some­times become pre­oc­cu­pied with attain­ing a mys­ti­cal spir­i­tual vision right now. Mostly, I try to be of ser­vice by shar­ing my teach­ings with oth­ers and work­ing for peace, jus­tice and the environment.

4. Does it result in an empha­sis on right­eous­ness and bound­ary draw­ing? Or is the empha­sis on com­pas­sion and an inclu­sive social (and even eco­log­i­cal) vision?

My expe­ri­ence in ISKCON, where rules and reg­u­la­tions were the stan­dard, showed a very insu­lar us and them mind­set. A purity sys­tem, sim­i­lar to the Jew­ish purity codes Jesus rejected, was insti­tuted. Inter­ac­tion with non-devotees was for the pur­pose of either con­ver­sion to the true reli­gion or to relieve them of their funds for the prop­a­ga­tion of the true reli­gion. Many of the lead­ers had an atti­tude of “chew ‘em up and spit ‘em out” towards devo­tees who became burned out and/or dis­il­lu­sioned and left the move­ment. Fresh recruits were read­ily avail­able in those days. I and oth­ers who left with me in protest of the exploita­tion of devo­tees within the move­ment went from being lead­ing devo­tees to being labeled demons.

Swamiji said we were dogs before we met him, and if we left we would become dogs again. He had a very neg­a­tive view of West­ern soci­ety. He believed he was bring­ing real civ­i­liza­tion to the West. By cre­at­ing a strict, Indian lifestyle among his fol­low­ers he sep­a­rated them from the rest of soci­ety by beliefs, dress, hair­styles, diet and just about every other aspect of life. In this way, he essen­tially cre­ated a cult.

Fol­low­ing the path of spon­ta­neous devo­tion, I feel I am one of the peo­ple in the global com­mu­nity, and I feel moved to work on a sys­temic level to relieve the suf­fer­ing of oth­ers. I have worked for peace, a liv­ing wage for all, an end to poverty, gay rights, holis­tic health care, alter­na­tive energy devel­op­ment, bio-regionalism, pro­tec­tion of the envi­ron­ment and other causes. Rather than set­ting myself apart from oth­ers, I rec­og­nize our com­mon human­ity and one­ness with all things. God-dess unites all.

5. Is it about believ­ing in a super­nat­ural being “out there” or about being in rela­tion­ship with a sacred real­ity “right here”?

Radha Krishna are believed to live eter­nally on a spir­i­tual planet, named Goloka, beyond this mate­r­ial uni­verse. Their lives there are described in elab­o­rate detail includ­ing their appear­ance, dress, asso­ciates, pas­times, foods, etc.. Now there are many books avail­able in Eng­lish describ­ing these things. I read a num­ber of them and find some thor­oughly delight­ful, while some por­tions I find dis­turb­ing due to dys­func­tional behav­ioral descrip­tions based on ancient Indian social cus­toms and aes­thet­ics. It is this dis­tinctly Indian cul­tural imprint through­out that makes it dif­fi­cult for me to accept as a purely lit­eral descrip­tion of the spir­i­tual world as many devo­tees man­age to do.

Frankly, how can any­one know just what the spir­i­tual world is like or just what God-dess looks like and does? How can words ever ade­quately describe such things. They are metaphors, myths and sym­bols that point to that which is beyond human com­pre­hen­sion. This does not mean that they are with­out mean­ing and value, but we should not mis­take the point­ing fin­ger for the moon it is point­ing at.

Many devo­tees would argue that these things were revealed when Radha Krishna incar­nated on earth 5,000 years ago and were accu­rately recorded and handed down through the dis­ci­plic suc­ces­sion. Also, Sri Chai­tanya and his fol­low­ers revealed these truths even fur­ther only five hun­dred years ago. I stud­ied how the myth of Jesus was cre­ated and devel­oped over the ages. I have seen how A.C. Bhak­tivedanta Swami has been mythol­o­gized. I also stud­ied myth in gen­eral and ancient his­tory enough to under­stand the basics and the lim­its of human knowl­edge. A reli­gious, mys­ti­cal expe­ri­ence is one thing. When it is put into writ­ten words, it is some­thing else. I also know that the dis­ci­plic suc­ces­sion of Bhak­tivedanta Swami is not what it is said to be. He and his guru devi­ated from the teach­ings of Bhak­tivin­ode Thakur who they claim as their predessor.

On the other hand, one need not believe in a spir­i­tual world that is “out there.” It is also right here, per­vad­ing every­thing in a dif­fer­ent dimen­sion. We can relate to the imma­nent pres­ence of God-dess right here. When we begin a per­sonal rela­tion­ship with God-dess in our daily lives, we become self-realized through grace and are able to feel the pres­ence. We do not have to sim­ply believe in God-dess but can know for our­selves. Yet all our know­ing is just a glim­mer of God-dess’ glory. Do we believe in God-dess or do we believe in a par­tic­u­lar set of dog­mas, doc­trines and writ­ings in old books?

Yet those old books also con­tain descrip­tions of a sacred realilty that is “right here.”

“There is no truth supe­rior to me. All rests on me, as pearls strung on a thread.
I am the taste of water, the light of the sun and moon, I am the syl­la­ble Om in the Vedas, the sound in ether and abil­ity in human beings. I am the orig­i­nal fra­grance of the earth, the radi­ance in fire. I am the life of all ascetics. I am the seed of all beings, the intel­li­gence of the intel­li­gent, and the power of the pow­er­ful. I am the strength of the strong, free of pas­sion and desire, and I am desire that accords with the spirit. The states of good­ness, pas­sion, and dark­ness come from me, and are within me, though I am not in them.”13

“Sri Krishna said, ‘My dear cowherd girls, please know that sep­a­ra­tion of our­selves is impos­si­ble at any time, at any place, or under any cir­cum­stances, because I am the all per­vad­ing Lord. Just as the ele­ments, earth, water, fire, air and ether, are present in all cre­ated things, so I am present within everyone.”14

These pas­sages are not much empha­sized, but they and oth­ers present a more imma­nent spir­i­tual pres­ence that we can more read­ily relate to.

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 10:52 and is filed under Steve's Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.